The wait is over

These two questions ground N.T. Wright’s powerful book “Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.” He goes on to write that most people, including many Christians, don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is.

“As long as we see Christian hope in terms of ‘going to heaven,’ of a salvation that is essentially away from this world, the two questions are bound to appear as unrelated … But if Christian hope is for God’s new creation, for ‘new heavens and new earth,’ and if that hope has already come to life in Jesus of Nazareth, then there is every reason to join the two questions together” (pp. vii, 5). The Scriptures appointed for Easter Day provide a classic formulation of the basis of Christian hope. Peter’s preaching in the house of the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10:34-43) recounted in the first reading powerfully illustrates one of the ways in which the early Church professed its faith and hope in the resurrection, the so-called “kerygma.” Taken from the Greek verb for “to cry or proclaim as a herald,” kerygma has come to mean the irreducible essence

FAITH